Capone was born in 1892, in Angri, Province of Salerno, Italy. He was the first of the nine children of Gabriele Capone, a barber, and Teresa Raiola, a seamstress. In 1895 with his family, including his brother Ralph, he emigrated in the United States, settling in downtown Brooklyn. He went by the Americanized form of his first name, James, and during his early years in America were born his siblings Frank, Al, Ermina, John, Albert, Matthew Capone and Mafalda Maritote.
Career
Capone left home at age 16 then fled New York City, joined a circus as a roustabout and eventually adopted the last name of his idol, William S. Hart, the foremost star of Western silent films in the 1920s. He also adopted the actor’s persona as much as possible, "even earning the 'Two-Gun' moniker long attached to the motion picture star". He worked to lose his Brooklyn accent and tried to disguise his Italian ancestry. He enlisted in the United States Army during World War I, served in France, and earned a commission as a lieutenant. After the war, Capone legally changed his name to Richard James Hart, partly in honor of his favorite cowboy film star, William S. Hart. He married in 1919 Kathleen Winch, and they had three sons: Richard, Sherman and Harry Hart. He soon became a federal prohibition agent, making his home in Homer, Nebraska. Following a series of successful raids against bootleggers, he gained the nickname of "Two-Gun" Hart. In 1926, Hart became a special agent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He was assigned to the Cheyenne River Indian reservation in South Dakota. While there he once had the duty of protecting President Calvin Coolidge and his family on their visit to the Black Hills. He was later transferred to the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington. He was credited with the arrest of at least 20 wanted killers while in that area, besides pursuing Indian law breakers and hunting down moonshiners and busting their stills. He spent some time as a law enforcement officer on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation in Plummer, Idaho. He learned of his siblings' life of crime from newspapers, when their exploits became national news.
Later years
He returned to Homer as a prohibition agent, in 1931. With the repeal of Prohibition two years later, he became a justice of the peace. In the early 1950s, newspaper reporters learned of his kinship to the Chicago gangster. He died in Homer, Nebraska, in 1952, of a heart attack at the age of 60.
